


Don't you mind.

by fredricogonzalez



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 03:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2453783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredricogonzalez/pseuds/fredricogonzalez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows she means this about more than fathers, means this about fathers’ sons, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't you mind.

 

He’s checking his watch like a bad habit— she’s late.

 

 

 

There’s five hundred miles between them and a pagan titty bar temple. An endless road, the sun setting, a regular movie montage ending.

 

She stables her hand on the dashboard, slim fingers, shaking wrist, radius and ulna clicking together like a broken metronome. “Stop the car.”

 

It’s the first time she’s said anything since she climbed in the passenger seat, signed her name on the dotted line to a life of bad reprieves.

 

He pulls the car over, bright light stop, and suddenly she’s tumbling out the door, puking up her guts on the pavement. The sun slants over his eyes in red, yellow orange and he blinks, sits there like a statue until suddenly he doesn’t, at her side, hand on her back, rubbing out the knots the way you unlace a shoe, practiced, calm, certain.

 

After, she sits back up against the open doorway and cries, and because he doesn’t have the words to make it better, he simply holds her, doesn’t know where to put his hands, worried she’s going to break if he touches one hair the wrong way.

 

“I killed my daddy,” she sobs, and his eyes settle closed, phosphones and bright, spinning neon, butterscotch skin sparkling like diamonds, blood and venom and steel. “I killed him.”

 

“You did it out of love,” he answers, but he doesn’t know if he’s saying it to reassure her or himself.

 

 

 

 

“Did you really mean it?”

 

“Mean what?” Lifts up her heart-shaped sunglasses, sunburn across her nose, freckles on her cheeks like constellations.

 

He looks at the dashboard, at the clock. “When you said you forgive me.”

 

A pause, the hanged man holding his breath, exposed for a phony. Not tough, not even a semblance of— scared little boy still quaking in his boots.

 

“Yes,” she says.

 

 

 

 

“You see, papa bears grumble. That’s what papa bears do.”

 

She looks at him crossways, green and gold, never-ending spring. “Only when they’re angry at themselves,” she whispers, tucking knobby knees up into her chest, crossing bird-bone ankles and curling her toes, pink nail polish disappearing under the rolling beige expanse of the dusty comforter.

 

“Or at you.”

 

Tilt of her head, stare so dead-on it freezes him like the barrel of a gun, his hands automatically wanting to go up high, _I surrender_. “People say cruel things when they hate themselves,” she says, and he knows she means this about more than fathers, means this about fathers’ sons, too.

 

 

 

 

"We used to make mobiles."

 

"Who?"

 

"My brother and me." She's got two wire hangers split in half in front of her, foam planets dangling by twine. "I miss that."

 

 

 

 

Fingers shake as a gun is cleaned.

 

He drops the clip and it breaks open on the floor and for a minute the panic sets in, the urge to run and hide under the table, cover his ears eyes nose mouth and say he’s sorry, sorry, _sorrysorrysorry_. Expects a cold fist to the back of the head, surprised when there’s a tender palm on his shoulder instead.

 

“You don’t have to do it faster,” she says, picks up the clip and starts shelling in the bullets one by one, slow. “We’ve got time.”

 

 

 

 

The first kiss is not like films and books and television shows always play.

 

It's desperate, clack of teeth, bloody saliva.

 

He presses hands to her dirty cheeks. "Are you okay? Please be okay."

 

_Please don't leave me._

 

She drops the stake in her hands, dust and crimson flakes falling with it. "I'm okay."

 

 

 

 

“Sometimes I wanna get it covered up,” he says, looking at inky black flames, love letters, goodbyes.

 

She touches the dark lines and he feels like a live-wire, trip trigger sensitive. “It’s a part of you,” she says, always so kind. “You can’t erase that.”

 

 

 

 

“How can you still believe in God anymore?”

 

They’re sitting in a church, Palm Sunday and she begged to go. Isn’t her side of the religious tracks, but there’s candles and Jesus and Bibles on the backs of pews. It’s half past mass, everyone emptied out, but they’re just sitting there, her head on his shoulder as she hums hymns like a fallen angel.

 

“Because I have faith,” she says, like it explains everything.

 

He looks at the alter, flickering flames in red vases, images of fire climbing up the walls, lighter fluid filling his senses. Convulses involuntarily but she’s right there, holding him down, kissing him, and it tastes like absolution.

For a moment, he believes.

 

 

 

 

“I hurt you,” he whispers, her body wrapped around his, wet and warm, knees moving on the sheets.

 

She pauses, knows he isn’t talking about this. “No, you didn’t.”

 

“I hurt your entire family.”

 

A sigh that sounds like sadness, her mouth on the curve of his jaw, sharp, warm. “Don’t you mind,” she whispers.

 

He finishes messy inside of her murmuring prayers of forgiveness into her skin.

 

 

 

 

Two minutes late.

 

His hands start to shake, anxiety bubbling up in his throat like black goo, tar-sticky, filling his lungs until he thinks he’s going to drown on it.

 

But then she’s there like Gabriel come to tell Mary of a miracle, until suddenly it’s a bloody last super, monsters rounding the corners at her feet.

 

He aims high, doesn’t miss, catches her like she’s tumbling down a rockslide.

 

"No nailing crosses today."

 

She squints up at him, blood down her neck, tinging her hair copper in the moonlight. "So you finally admit you're not Judas. About time."

 

 

 

 

"My fault."

 

"Not yours. Fate's."

 

"I don't believe in fate."

 

"I don't believe in vampires."

 

 

 

 

She's got a book propped up on her knees, hiding her face, shielded.

 

He pries it away, tilting his head. "What you thinkin' 'bout?"

 

Clenched fingers, scraped knuckles, split glass grin.

 

_I love you._

 

 

 

 

“Don’t you miss him?” she asks, head tucked into his chest.

 

“Don’t ask me that.” But he's tender, threading her hair through his fingers like strands of mobile twine.

 

He doesn't look at clocks anymore.

 

“I miss him, too," she says, and turns out the bedside light.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
